Grinding out stumps is not a great way to spend an afternoon, but it’s a great business when done right. Just ask Mike Lloyd from Stridem who specialises in cutting down trees and taking out stumps. For this type of work to be successful, Lloyd said you need good, solid, reliable equipment, which is one of the reasons his company uses a Peterson 2710D grinder, which he got from Komatsu Forest.
For this type of work to be successful, Lloyd said you need good, solid, reliable equipment, which is one of the reasons his company uses a Peterson 2710D grinder, which he got from Komatsu Forest. He also uses Peterson 5000G and 5000H chippers.
So why Peterson gear?
“For a start, grinding can be quite hard on machinery, so you need gear that can last,” said Lloyd. “However, you also need a good supply of spare parts and Brenton (Yon) and the team from Komatsu Forest give us great service in that respect.”
As well as the quality of the equipment, Lloyd sees his relationship with Komatsu Forest as one of the reasons he goes back to them again and again for equipment. As well as the back-up service and parts, he said that in the past they have gone the extra distance for him when it has mattered most.
“We’ve had a few catastrophic problems over the time, no doubt about that,” he said. “And they just sort of swoop in there and help out how they can and get me back on track.”
Lloyd has been using Peterson equipment for almost 17 years, with his current crop of machinery being in place for about four years. The machinery needs to be in tip-top shape due to the harsh nature of the work. He used to do a lot of work on gum trees, but now pine is what his team concentrate on the most. There’s no doubt tree stumps are the hardest part of the job.
“Stumps are a nasty sort of material,” he said. “We’ve got a pretty serious team behind me, boilermakers and the like, so we can do it all in house. And for that we need some pretty serious equipment.”
As for the throughput, this also impresses Lloyd.
The amount of work a machine can get through is important due to Stridem wanting to resell the product it shreds/chips – whether that be as mulch, biomass, or potting mix.
“We used to have old bits of gear we’d get at auctions and put it all together and work with it,” he said. “Then we got the Peterson machines, which have given us the ability to shred large volumes quickly. I’ve come from a pulp company to now where we process anything from massive trees to stumps, which is why the type of equipment we use is so important .”
The 2710D comes in an array of engine configurations including the Caterpillar Tier IV C15 580 hp (433 kW), C18 755 hp (563 kW), or optional Tier II C18 765 hp (570 kW) for export. Its feed opening can take a range of materials and measures 153 cm x 81 cm. When boosted by Peterson’s high-lift feed roll, the feed opening’s maximum lift is 112 cm, which is among the largest in its class.